Outside my windows a mountain of leaves cascades down on our lawn and deck. Every year we face the same dilemma: How to get the ridiculous number of leaves raked out to the street for leaf pick-up while still participating in the state championship run. I don't exaggerate when I say that our house dwells in a maelstrom of leaves. We have fifteen deciduous trees directly on our property and live downwind from another fifty trees. While I celebrate the glory that autumn brings in brilliant golds, yellows, reds, and oranges, I am loathe to figure out how to manage them once they depart their limbs and descend in a mass to our lawn. Raking and blowing takes up hours of time which we never seem to have because the boys, the worker bees, are still at practice or at games.

It's a nice to dilemma to have trying to balance a high school championship season with the leaf blowing season. But nice or not it still has to be resolved. We have resorted to raking at 10 p.m. on a Sunday night or trying to do a little each day for a week hoping that our smaller piles won't disintegrate in a wind storm before we can coerce them into larger piles. While people who know our home wax poetic about the beauty of living in the woods, we have grown to view fall colors as a curse. We would never pay to travel to Vermont to see what we regard as "the enemy." So as people drive by the house oohing and ahhing over our glorious ceiling and carpet of leaves, we are outside exercising our freedom of speech in colorful ways.

Now we are one leaf raker/blower short since Bryce is away at college. And Robbie, who even said he was looking forward to raking, has proven to be a no-show since his school keeps moving along in their journey to the state championship. With our deck now literally calf high in oak leaves, I have made a bold decision. I had a landscape service give me a quote on doing all the raking of the leaves this year. And shocker – they weren't really all that expensive. Now I wonder why I spent all those years with numb fingers from hours of maneuvering the blower around the lawn. Why did I attempt to rake swaths of leaves to the curbside only to find them back on my lawn the next morning due to a cruel northwest wind? Why did I ruin a perfectly good comforter collecting and dragging leaves from the back of the house because I couldn't find the plastic tarp we always used? I can't believe I probably could have had the entire lawn raked for the cost of a comforter! I won't make that mistake again.

So now I can concentrate on cheering for Robbie and his team. Tonight is the last game ever for Robbie at his home field, so it will be a bittersweet evening. Having sat on the bleachers for six years now, I am already starting to miss all that those games represented. Just like autumn moves from brilliant glory to winter's grey, so too does soccer in the Midwest. These wonderful, crisp evenings and afternoons sitting on the sidelines soaking up friendships and competition will now give way to smelly, claustrophobic indoor soccer. Of course those of you in the south or California are probably looking forward to winter soccer, so I admit I'm writing from a Midwest and Northeast bias. For those of us in states with four distinct seasons, winter spells a dark, smaller game on surfaces that often only approximate grass because they are green.

My goalkeeper son loved indoor soccer because he got a good workout. Instead of touching the ball two to six times in a game, he would have to make a save every few seconds. He also got to occasionally dribble the ball down and take a shot. So by his thinking indoor soccer rocked. But Robbie usually ends up with rug burns, stress injuries to his joints, and aggressive attacks. Since indoor soccer ends up being a mixed bag of competition level, Robbie's team ends up playing adult teams many of which have older players with too much testosterone and too little skill. Since the indoor game runs on speed with only a handful of players on the field, everyone but the goalkeeper rotates through every two minutes or so. With balls and players bouncing off the walls, the game has an entirely different sound. Robbie's indoor league has now switched to a straight forty minute game without a half-time so that the facility can fit in more games in an evening. Oh, I should also mention that many of the games are after 10 p.m. at night, which used to be my prime leaf-raking time.

I'll miss high school soccer. I'll miss the tradition that high school sports foster. I'll miss the victories cheered on by scores of the team's peers. I'll miss the alumni who come to share the experience and relive their own pasts. I'll miss teachers and administrators who attend regularly to support the players. I'll miss the camaraderie that parents share. I'll miss witnessing the brotherhood (or sisterhood) the team develops over the course of the ten week season. I'll miss everything which created the memories I'll hold for years to come. High school sports provide a special experience for all involved. For most players, high school will be the final opportunity to be a player rather than a fan contributing to the school's history. Winning a state championship is the ultimate goal, but sharing in the experience of playing with friends from school for the pride of the school remains the real reason to play high school soccer.

So this year I'm savoring these final high school games. Since it is Robbie's final year, it makes the prospect of indoor soccer even less appealing. There are only two pluses I cling to: one – Robbie will play college soccer and two – someone else is raking my leaves from now on!